Watch what main-currents draw the years:
Cut Prejudice against the grain:
But gentle words are always gain:
Regard the weakness of thy peers:
Nor toil for title, place, or touch
Of pension, neither count on praise:
It grows to guerdon after-days:
Nor deal in watchwords overmuch;
Not clinging to some ancient saw;
Not master'd by some modern term;
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm:
And in its season bring the law;
That from Discussion's lip may fall
With Life, that, working strongly, binds
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all.
For Nature also, cold and warm,
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro' many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form.
Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.
So let the change which comes be free
To ingroove itself with that, which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.
A saying, hard to shape in act;
For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.
Ev'n now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.
A slow-develop'd strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States —
The warders of the growing hour,
But vague in vapor, hard to mark;
And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.
Of many changes, aptly join'd,
Is bodied forth the second whole. Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind;
A wind to puff your idol-fires,
And heap their ashes on the head; To shame the boast so often made, That we are wiser than our sires.
Oh yet, if Nature's evil star
Drive men in manhood, as in youth, To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war
If New and Old, disastrous feud,
Must ever shock, like armed foes,
And this be true, till Time shall close,
That Principles are rain'd in blood;
Not yet the wise of heart would cease
To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt, But with his hand against the hilt, Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;
Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay,
Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, That knowledge takes the sword away
Would love the gleams of good that broke
From either side, nor veil his eyes:
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke:
To-morrow yet would reap to-day,
As we bear blossoms of the dead; Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.
I KNEW an old wife lean and poor,
Her rags scarce held together;
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather.
He held a goose upon his arm,
He utter'd rhyme and reason,
"Here, take the goose, and keep you warm,
It is a stormy season."
She caught the white goose by the leg,
't was no great matter.
The goose let fall a golden egg
With cackle and with clatter.
She dropt the goose, and caught the pelf,
And ran to tell her neighbors;
And bless'd herself, and cursed herself,
And rested from her labors.
And feeding high, and living soft,
Grew plump and able-bodied;
Until the grave churchwarden doff'd,
The parson smirk'd and nodded.
So sitting, served by man and maid,
She felt her heart grow prouder:
But ah! the more the white goose laid
It clack'd and cackled louder.
It clutter'd here, it chuckled there;
It stirr'd the old wife's mettle:
She shifted in her elbow-chair,
And hurl'd the pan and kettle.
"A quinsy choke thy cursed note!"
Then wax'd her anger stronger.
"Go, take the goose, and wring her throat,
I will not bear it longer."
Then yelp'd the cur, and yawl'd the cat;
Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer.
The goose flew this way and flew that,
And fill'd the house with clamor.
As head and heels upon the floor
They flounder'd all together,
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather:
He took the goose upon his arm,
He utter'd words of scorning;
"So keep you cold, or keep you warm,
It is a stormy morning.”
The wild wind rang from park and plain.
And round the attics rumbled,
Till all the tables danced again,
And half the chimneys tumbled.
The glass blew in, the fire blew out,
The blast was hard and harder.
Her cap blew off, her gown blew up,
And a whirlwind clear'd the larder:
And while on all sides breaking loose
Her household fled the danger,
Quoth she," The Devil take the goose,
And God forget the stranger!"
AT Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,
The game of forfeits done -
Beneath the sacred bush and past away·
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump'd the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith
Right thro' the world, "at home was little left,
And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,
To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with "I hold by him.”
"And I," quoth Everard, "by the wassail-bowl."
"Why yes,” I said, "we knew your gift that way
At college: but another which you had,
I mean of verse (for so we held it then,)
What came of that?" "You know," said Frank, "he burnt
His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books".
And then to me demanding why? "Oh, sir,
He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 't was nothing that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:
God knows he has a mint of reasons: ask.
It pleased me well enough.”
Nay, nay," said Hall,
Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth,
Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt."
Said Francis, "pick'd the eleventh from this hearth,
And have it: keep a thing, its use will come.
I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes."
He laugh'd, and I, though sleepy, like a horse
That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears;
For I remember'd Everard's college fame
When we were Freshmen: then at my request
He brought it; and the poet little urged,
But with some prelude of disparagement,
Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,
Deep-chested music, and to this result.
|